Today marks the start of Ask an Expert Week – a seven-day period when members of the public can have questions about their finances answered free of charge by members of the Financial Planning Association.
The week is designed to showcase the expertise of financial planners, and to increase the number of people use the services of financial planners.
“We started this a couple of years back and we thought, we have Financial Planning Week, which is more about financial planners getting involved and running seminars and reaching out to consumers and the public and their local community, and we added Ask An Expert into that week – which we will continue to do,” says Mark Rantall, chief executive officer of the FPA.
“But what we thought is that people start the new year with the best of intentions, they make all kinds of resolutions about their diet and their physical regime, and we all go through that process, so we thought we probably should start the year out with something to engage people in what probably many of them do. Probably their health is first, but their finances are running second in terms of things they want to get better at and improve.
“We thought this was a way to start the new year to give people a chance to fulfil what they started at the beginning of the year, and a chance for them to ask some questions, in a non-threatening environment, about their finances. It does not matter how simple or how complex those questions are – that’s for an expert at the other end of the line to answer.”
The FPA will run an online forum on its website and take questions via Twitter. The association will also refer people to its established “Find a Planner” service.
“So how members get involved in this is they volunteer, on a pro-bono sense, to answer where they can those questions, or refer them on if they need further advice. We’ve got over 80 volunteers sitting at the back end of Ask An Expert to help with those questions,” Rantall says.
Rantall says it is not too late for members to get involved.
“They should drop us a line and let us know, and we’ll get them involved in the process,” Rantall says.
Rantall says the FPA can help members alert their local communities know that Ask An Expert Week is on by “modifying press releases for local distribution, and enabling the local member to put themselves forward to help during this period of time
“We’re always looking for members who are wanting to get involved at a national level in pro bono activity to come forward and volunteer and get engaged in that.”
Rantall says Ask An Expert is part of the FPA’s larger pro-bono activity, which also includes working with communities after natural disasters, and Financial Planning Week, which takes place in August.
“It’s the heart of what a profession is and does – how we help the broader community on a pro bono basis, as many professions do,” he says.
